Correspondence

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Correspondence (previously known as Connection) is one of nine Spheres of magic in Mage: The Ascension. The Ahl-i-Batin occupied the Seat of Correspondence in the original Council of Nine Mystic Traditions, but it is currently held by the Virtual Adepts. The Shard Realm of Correspondence maps physically to Mercury. Deals with spatial relations, giving the Mage power over space and distances. Correspondence magic allows powers such as teleportation, seeing into distant areas, levitation and flying. At higher levels the Mage may also co-locate himself or even stack different spaces within each-other. Correspondence can be combined with almost any other sphere to create effects that span distances.

Space, interrelationships and sympathetic links all become clear through the study of Correspondence. By bending space or bypassing it entirely, a mage can travel rapidly, fly or teleport from place to place. Divining locations allowsthe mage to see far-away places or direct magic over distances. With a link between a person and an object, Effects may be targeted through connecting rituals.

Distance forms no barrier to a master of Correspondence. Indeed, distance and even space do not exist to the student of this Sphere. Through the unifying Correspondence Point, mages realize that all things occupy the same space — or no space at all. Virtual Adepts, the most dedicated modern students of Correspondence, theorize that all things coexist in a single All-Space or Correspondence Point, and that bypassing space is simply a matter of realizing this unity. Mathematically, space is just an illusion, a convenient construct of the mind. Objects, people and places don’t really take up space, according to such theories. Instead, everything is just a Pattern, and space simply describes the relations of different Patterns to one another.

Mystically inclined mages see Correspondence through the theories of contagion and sympathy. Any two things that have touched share a little trace of that connection, which can be called on through Correspondence. Objects or places that are similar in Pattern can be manipulated through that similitude. Any sort of connection opens the door to the manipulation of Patterns. It’s always easier to work with the familiar than the strange, after all.

In and of itself, Correspondence understanding is highly abstract. A mage skilled in Correspondence can measure space, find connections between objects and move Patterns around. Combined with the other Spheres, Corresponding becomes a formidable tool indeed. Proper use of Correspondence lets a mage bypass the limits of its own senses, extending its magic and actions to distant places or objects as long as he can form some connection. Correspondence visualization lets a mage see far-away places, people or things, and perhaps even touch them, go to them or drag them to itself. This door swings both ways, though. Just as a mage forges a connection, that connection can be traced back to the mage.

The more disparate a set of objects, or the greater the perceived distance crossed, the more difficult the Correspondence Effect. Such distances can be combined in conjunction with other Effects. Doing so makes the Effect more difficult to cast but capable of extending to great ranges, possibly even beyond the mage’s senses and to places of which he is not aware. Normally, a mage can extend its magic only to areas of its immediate senses, but Correspondence ranges bypass this limitation. The Correspondence Sphere lets the mage perform Effects beyond its line of sight, outside its hearing and otherwise in places beyond its normal reach.

Despite its capacity to bend space and distance, Correspondence functions only on whole Patterns unless combined with the various Pattern Spheres. That is, it’s impossible to just teleport away someone’s heart with Correspondence alone. In essence, Correspondence does not affect Patterns directly; such manipulations must be done with other magic. Correspondence simply lets those Patterns be affected, whole and complete, in changes of space or distance. If the mage wants to use Pattern Spheres to affect something with Correspondence, she’s limited by the Correspondence level (if it’s lower than the Pattern Sphere). Thus, a mage can teleport something with just Correspondence, but if she wants to change its Pattern at a distance, its skill with Correspondence is as important as its skill with the other Sphere.

Advanced students of Correspondence seem befuddled or distracted, as if they’re not paying attention to their surroundings. In truth, they are constantly aware of their immediate areas to a degree that others can hardly comprehend. In spite of their apparent distraction, these mages exercise absolute precision of motion, a result of their intimate understanding of distances.[1]

Standard Powers

• Immediate Spatial Perceptions

Basic understanding of Correspondence allows a mage to develop precise and intuitive judgments of distance or area. A simple Effect enhances the mage’s awareness of space to determine exact directions and distances. The mage can cast spells to “feel out” the contours of space around him, using mystical senses to determine the placement of other Patterns even beyond the normal senses. With the proper Effects, a mage can also detect warps in space or the presence of gates, sinks, wormholes and other instabilities or tears in the very fabric of perceived distance. Combined with various Pattern Spheres, the mage can determine exact sizes and distances to creatures, objects or forces. With more ephemeral Spheres, the mage could develop a rough idea of the locations of nearby thinking beings, the area of power in a Node or the direction and distance to a peculiarity or strange coincidence. [2]

• • Sense Space/Touch Space

With scrying magic and projection, the mage can cast out its senses to various places beyond its physical form. The mage could touch and feel something physically at a distance or use magic to see a vista at a far-away location. The mage chooses one target and performs an appropriate Effect to scry there. Sensing a distant area forges a sort of connection between the mage and the location — a warp of Correspondence as the mage brings its Pattern in contact with the place — that can be detected with simple Correspondence awareness. This connection also extends the mage’s perceptions to allow him to use its magic at such places. Conversely, the mage can make wards that bar scrying, or defend the Patterns that she perceives from conjuration or transportation, by strengthening the hold of space and hedging out such distant perceptions. Combining Correspondence sensing and touching with Pattern Spheres lets the mage affect small Patterns at a distance. The mage could reach out and touch a stone from a far distance, then use Matter with Correspondence to pull it into its hand, conjuring it from across a field. Similarly, the mage could deposit an animal some distance away with a touch and a conjunctional use of Correspondence and Life. As with all uses of Pattern Spheres with Correspondence, the mage is limited to its lesser understanding in the possible Effects. In conjunction with other Spheres, long-range Correspondence allows the mage to seek someone out in order to establish mental contact or read thoughts, project probability manipulation at a far distance, search for powerful sources of Quintessence to manipulate or even look into distant spirit worlds.[3]

• • • Pierce Space/Seal Gate Co-locality Perception
      

Tearing the very fabric of space itself, the mage can open a brief gateway to other places and step through. While the mage could only cast its senses out to distant locations previously, she can now actually travel via teleportation. The mage needs only sense the destination — or even haphazardly cast out to a random place, although doing so is extremely dangerous — then perform an appropriate Effect to change its Pattern’s location. Drawing together connections in various Patterns — or severing them — is also possible, and it causes the Patterns affected to build a stronger or weaker bond that can be exploited later through Correspondence. By strengthening the bonds of space instead of warping them, a mage can seal gateways and block the passage of Correspondence Effects. The mage can actually bar an area from passage, be it mundane or through Correspondence. Such an Effect prevents transportation in an area, and it can be cast over Patterns other than the mage itself.

Finally, moderate comprehension of Correspondence allows a mage to split its perceptions over several locations at once. Although the mage can open a door to only a single place, or manipulate individual Patterns without major effort, she can use its scrying to view multiple places simultaneously. The mage could experience the show in any form appropriate to its paradigm. She might see a set of ghostly superimposed images around its as she spies on multiple locations, or perhaps she has a series of small simultaneous images for different places.

With Pattern Spheres, the mage can use Correspondence to teleport Patterns or move objects from a distance. The mage reaches out and bypasses space to touch the object from range. Searching through multiple locations at once lets the mage perform very acute investigations, especially when using other Spheres to look for specific results.

• • • • Rend Space/Co-locate Self

Adepts of Correspondence can not only tear through the Tapestry to create warps or rents in space, they can force such distortions to remain instead of just sliding their own Patterns along brief slips of distance. The mage can create a free-standing wormhole or gate that transports anyone to another place, or he can bend space to remove something from the bounds of the normal Tapestry entirely. Space isn’t necessarily mutable at this level, but various points can be connected or Patterns can be placed in new locations or even outside the concept of “space” altogether. Combined with specific wards, the gates through space can be made selective so that only certain types of Patterns may pass through. By causing its own Pattern to manifest in several perceived spaces, the mage can appear to exist in multiple places at once. Judicious use of other Spheres can let the mage think separately in these places (with Mind magic) or even act differently in each (with Life magic).

Pattern magic used by an Adept of Correspondence can not only teleport or move objects, but establish gates that bar or warp certain Patterns. A particular Pattern can even be thrust into its own bubble of non-space, closeted away from the universe. In such a bubble the mage can scry safely or put away an object where it can’t be found or manipulated.[5]

• • • • • Mutate Localities/ Co-Locate

Mastery of Correspondence allows a mage not only to pull spaces together or hold them apart, but to bend, twist and flex space itself like taffy. The mage can stretch distances, alter volumes and spin around the very concepts of arcs or angles. A three-foot-long rod might be made to span an apparent 10 feet, or a gun could be folded so that its bullet comes out the apparently curving barrel heading toward the shooter, since the bullet travels along curved space and thus follows a straight line through a curved barrel. Just as an Adept of Correspondence can stack its perceptions or presence to see and interact with multiple locations, the Master can pull entire chunks of space together so that they can interact freely. Instead of gates through which things pass to travel, the whole areas become superimposed on one another. Objects and creatures can exist in two places simultaneously, because the places are now a single location. Items could be made to overlap without damage; in effect, more than one thing can occupy a single space at one time.

Correspondence Masters can use other Spheres to cause Patterns to interact bizarrely in overlapped space, to allow themselves to appear in multiple places with independent bodies and thoughts, to cause an object’s spatial warping to also reflect in its physical characteristics or to shield areas from intrusion.

Archspheres

Masters of Correspondence generally use two major theories in their work.The first is the mystic doctrine of contagion. The second, more recent theory is that of the Correspondence Point.

For all Arch-Spheres, there is a step the mage takes to move beyond Mastery. For Correspondence, the mage must figure out how to be in the same space as himself; the Correspondence Point lets Masters exist in many places simultaneously. Next, the mage must resolve the paradox of coexisting in space with himself as more than one simultaneous awareness of singular space. Confused? Nobody said it was easy.

••••• • Fold Space/Create Space

Rarely used inside the Horizon, this power allows the Archmage to reduce or increase the distance between any two objects. If the Archmage is not working in empty space, then he must use other Spheres to manipulate the intervening Patterns (or Spirit, in the Umbra). Successes can be used to remove or add to the space in an area. The mage could create a strip or bubble of additional distance in an area, pulling Patterns like taffy with conjunctional magic in order to make them occupy the new distance. Conversely, the mage could collapse an of space to a pinpoint, easily letting anyone cross it. At this level of Archmastery, the mage can effectively create space, generating a zone of emptiness that pushes existing space outward around it. With the right Pattern magics, this space can be filled with other matter or made to look like part of the preexisting landscape. Note that space is not a Pattern per se; it is just, as one Archmage jokingly put it, “the place where the Tellurian keeps all its stuff.” Thus, creating space does not require the use of Quintessence. A mage can folding a preexisting Pattern to warp its interaction with space. The mage can take a person and twist him into the shape of a pretzel; subjectively, the person still seems to exist according to his normal proportions, but the world around him is horribly bent. Naturally, this can lead to all sorts of complications, though it does not actually cause direct harm.

••••• •• No Warding

As the name of this power implies, the mage realizes that wards are something to be practically brushed aside, as the region inside the ward is space that can be reached. Normally, a mage can use Correspondence to bypass warded areas, teleporting directly into or out of an area with Correspondence gates or folding. Wards, however, are tied to the Patterns of the Tellurian itself, so that even a mage who doesn’t necessarily cross intervening space can be hindered, harmed or hedged out. With this understanding, the mage no longer relies on Tellurian Patterns for guidance. Instead of using the Correspondence Point as an external gateway to all space, then, the mage becomes a sort of Correspondence Point, existing everywhere at once, bypassing the effects of wards that are keyed to concepts of "inside,” “outside” and “touching.”

A mage can also temporarily negate the powers of a ward so that others can evade it. The process is similar, but the mage himself becomes the Correspondence gate through which others access the warded space or object. Since the mage can easily co-locate aspects of himself, though, the subjects don’t necessarily need to see or touch him or even be aware of the Effect.

••••• ••• Limits of Spirit

At this level of Archmastery, the mage can travel anywhere, as with normal Correspondence teleportation or co-location, but still takes material (or spiritual) reality with him. The mage carries some of the characteristics of Earthly space with him when he travels. Even though he does not technically co-locate with Earth, he need not suffer from the harsh environment of his physical location(s).If an Archmage with this mastery of Correspondence goes from the Earth to anywhere within the Horizon, he must still cross the Gauntlet or suffer the effects of space. The mage brings the material aspect of the Earth with him; he does not create it wherever he goes. The extreme cold and radiation of space are still deadly. If he travels outside the Horizon, he does not carry this material aspect with him, as that region rejects the separation of spiritual and material. Mastery of Spirit is required to survive here. Thus, this power does not protect against the invasion of outside environmental forces, but allows the mage to draw upon safe Earthly reserves, breathing normally, walk on (non-existent) ground and so on. Since the mage can easily create bubbles of space that share characteristics with other space — essentially co-locating spatial features instead of just objects — it’s a simple matter to section off a pocket of space to which only the mage and others with this level of Archmastery have any access.

••••• •••• No Limits

At this level, any movement is possible. Mages of supreme Correspondence Archmastery can break through any barrier, even the Gauntlet and the Horizon. To the mage, all space is one space.